1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally pertains to wireless communications and, more particularly, to a method for achieving spatial sharing in a directional wireless local area network (WLAN) system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Interest in unlicensed 60 GHz millimeter wave (mmW) networks is increasing. WirelessHD technology is the first 60 GHz mmW industry standard, which enables multi-gigabit wireless streaming of high-definition audio, video, and data among consumer electronics, personal computer, and portable products. Another multi-gigabit wireless communications technology operating over the 60 GHz mmW frequency band is Wireless Gigabit Affiance (WiGig) technology, which has been standardized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) as the IEEE 802.11ad standard (see IEEE Std 802.11ad TM-2012, December 2012).
The WiGig technology supplements and extends the IEEE 802.11 media access control (MAC) layer and is backward compatible with the IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard. The WiGig MAC supports a centralized network architecture such as an infrastructure basic service set (BSS) or a personal BSS (PBSS), where the central coordinator, e.g., access point (AP) or personal BSS control point (PCP), transmits beacons to synchronize all stations (STAs) in the network. Rather than other IEEE 802.11 WLAN technologies operating over 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz frequency band, the WiGig technology makes extensive use of beamforming (BF) to achieve directional transmissions.